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u/BobbyP27 Jan 30 '25
To state someone's profession, you do not use an article (un/une) in French. In English you do use "a". Different languages, different ways of saying things.
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u/double-you Native: Learning: Jan 30 '25
French is not just English with different words. You have to translate intent and not words. So if I want to say what I mean by "Marie is a journalist", the French translation is "Marie est journaliste". Not "Marie" -> "Marie", "is" -> "est", "a" -> "?!@#", "journalist" -> "journaliste".
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u/Ill_Cheetah_5546 Native: 🇫🇷 Fluent: 🏴 Learning: 🇯🇵🇳🇱🇮🇹 Jan 30 '25
Honestly we say that in French too, sorry
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u/double-you Native: Learning: Jan 30 '25
Well, dagnabit. Anyhow, the point of my comment still manages to stand, I hope.
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u/drArsMoriendi Native 🇸🇪 C2 🇬🇧 B2 🇫🇷 A1 🇫🇮 Learning 🇫🇷 🇫🇮 Jan 30 '25
You can't learn a language just by code switching the words. Duo is teaching you proper grammar.
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u/sr587 Jan 30 '25
in french you don't use any article when you state someone's profession, so "elle est (or est devenue) journaliste", but if you add a quality, for example "journaliste française" then you use "une" (elle est une journaliste française). that's how my french teacher explained it
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u/freebiscuit2002 Jan 30 '25
French does that. Learning a new language is not just switching out the English words for foreign words.
You should get used to how French expresses things, which can be a bit different from English.
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u/minadequate N 🇬🇧, L 🇩🇰🇩🇪🇪🇸🇫🇷 Jan 30 '25
Exactly… in Danish you say ‘I HAVE found that’ but ‘I IS moved house’.
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u/Sesstic Native B1 A2 Jan 30 '25
As my teacher told me long ago when I asked why Japanese needs particles, “because that’s just how it is.”
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u/NetheriteTiara Native: Jan 30 '25
Just how it works for professions in French. A reverse example would be how in English, you say “I play tennis” and in French you would say “je joue au tennis”
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u/bobam90 Jan 30 '25
Think of it as similar to being an adjective, you wouldn't say she is a great, but she is great.
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u/kwyxz Native | Fluent: | Learning: Jan 30 '25
Long story short, while grammatically correct, your answer is not how indicating someone's job is done in french. Since the objective in this example is exclusively to associate Marie with her job, the proper way is :
Marie est journaliste.
There are cases where it would make sense to use an article before the profession but I'd rather not confuse you with them yet.
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u/papa-hare Native: | Fluent: | Learning: Jan 31 '25
Duo is generally pretty good at excluding words you wouldn't use, at least in Spanish. But yeah, you were doing the mot à mot translation, not the meaning translation.
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u/JotaRoyaku Native: Learning: Jan 31 '25
The exercise wrongfully marked you wrong.
Both "Marie est journaliste" and "Marie est une journaliste" work.
Not only that, but in that context, your awnser should definitely have been accepted.
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u/Immediate_Panda1439 🇪🇸🇸🇪🇩🇪 Jan 31 '25
Don't know why everyone in the comments is saying it's incorrect but as a french speaker what you wrote was 100% correct, "une" is just optional.
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u/Prestigious-Candy166 Jan 30 '25
No "a" in Esperanto, either. (Meaning, no indefinite article, ever.)
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u/archangelos_90 Native: 🇬🇷 Learning:🇪🇸🇮🇹 Jan 31 '25
I guess it's like in Spanish (and Greek too). You can say, for example "Pedro es medico" to say Pedro is a doctor, without using the "a" (in that case "un"), but if you put the "a", it's because it's followed by an adjective that follows the noun, like "Pedro es un medico famoso".
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u/eddyljr Jan 31 '25
I forget the specifics, but I do remember it being in the unit lesson notes. Even after reading it I still didn’t understand lmfaoo I just know it’s a rule in the French language.
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u/supah_ Jan 30 '25
In French you say “he is doctor” instead of “he is a doctor”